Editorial: Padilla trial proves process can work

Monday

Aug 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMAug 27, 2007 at 3:21 AM

Editorial about Jose Padilla.

That wasn't so hard, was it?

We're referring to the conviction in federal court last week of former enemy combatant and alleged “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla. The former Chicagoan was found guilty of conspiring to commit terrorist acts overseas by an ordinary federal jury - initially thought by the White House to be too dumb, naive and weak of will to handle a case of such complexity and probable peril to national security.

Notably, 300 million Americans did not wake up the morning after the verdict to a firebomb in place of the sun on the eastern horizon, or to an intelligence apparatus crippled by the super-secrets revealed at trial, or to the discovery they'd all been forcefully converted to militant Islam overnight.

George W. Bush must be terribly surprised.

Bush is the commander in chief, after all, who felt so threatened by U.S. citizen Padilla that he ordered him held without due process for nearly five years, much of it in a military brig in South Carolina, where he was chained in solitary confinement and denied access to an attorney, to family, even to the basics such as sleep. This is the elected president, after all, who asserted he could do that unilaterally and indefinitely, without oversight by Congress or any court. This is the leader of the free world, after all, who borrowed a trick from the old Soviet Union and made someone disappear.

As for that radiological “dirty bomb” that Padilla was going to set off in a major American city and make 9-11 look like a picnic? Wasn't mentioned in a trial spanning three months. Indeed, the government's story on Padilla changed substantially, going from the aforementioned urban nightmare to plotting to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas, before finally settling on conspiring in the 1990s to aid jihadists in Chechnya and Bosnia. Why, Padilla was such a menace to life as we know it that he didn't even merit his own trial, instead having to share the spotlight with two others, Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, who themselves did not much appreciate Padilla's presence, as will be reflected in their appeals.

Ultimately, Padilla was sunk by his fingerprints on an al-Qaida training camp application form. Terrorist wannabes actually have to fill out an application? No wonder he struck such fear into the Oval Office.

Padilla faces 15 years to life behind bars. If he's as bad as the jury believed him to be, he has every minute of that punishment coming. But Americans should be less relieved than resentful at the wholly unnecessary way in which the Bush administration compromised and cheapened their Constitution in achieving that conclusion. This president's disregard for the rule of law and his desire to enforce the absolute rule of one man, so counter to everything America stands for, arguably will have a more lasting impact, and not for the better, than anything Padilla attempted.

So pay no mind to Bush & Co.'s spin on this verdict as a vindication of its views. They defeat their own arguments by their renewed attempt to preserve enemy combatant status for Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, arrested in Peoria in 2001 and, like Padilla, held without charge.

While our Constitution has survived worse than Padilla, this is serious business, and Bush still has his defenders, who will issue bromides like “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” In part they're right, and no one here is suggesting the civilian courts can handle every wartime situation. Some interesting compromises, such as a national security court, have been proposed.

But the Constitution is not a comic book, either, its provisions for government behavior to be dismissed with a wink and a snicker. It is possible to protect and be true to ourselves simultaneously, and Padilla helps prove it.

Peoria Journal Star

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.